Re: [Oracle Forms replacement] Ways to start this project

From:

Andrew Russell

Subject:

Re: [Oracle Forms replacement] Ways to start this project

Date:

Wed, 7 Mar 2012 08:44:45 +1300

Yes absolutely, replacing formss is a massive task.
I am a 20year veteran developing in forms and i have some thoughts.
The corporations that have an exising forms infrastructure. They have been running their forms for years they like the dev speed and the tight linking with the db. They hate the desupport cycle and waiting till oracle end of lifes forms. With no clear migration path that handles the massive codebase they are stuck.
They will not accept an immature project as a replacement so that gives us 5 years or so before we need to consider their needs.
Andrew

> replacement for such tools (tools that once became popular because of

> their freeware aspect). That is because developing replacements of

> something that changes itself is always a short-term goal and

> potential success is not very rewarding. The Free World seeks for

> stability - products that can be utilized for years, software

> developed on current and near-future requirements.

There are other forms products in the world for which a replacement is wanted - on VMS there is DecForms - most often found in the FIMS language .IFDL file.

afaik - there is no equivalent forms definition language for ncurses or anything else into which one could readily change this very capable forms definitions (and function exits) into a linkable object on Linux.

Agreed taking on all of Oracle Forms is a big task - perhaps this smaller task is a more suitable goal?

>

> The trouble for me is that out of all consultants that would be

> natural partners for such a free initiative some wouldn't dream of

> stability/predictability of software components since their success

> lies in their knowledge of tools that are affected by changes. Some

> others are in gray area but they rarely seem to be early adopters what

> makes it hard to gain momentum (users are welcome contributors in

> FOSS).

>

> Conversely, most of the free software enthusiasts are not interested

> in this kind of tools. So unless someone does really solid 'market

> research', I am afraid we're left without any large group of interest

> but with fair amount of wishful thinking. This is why I would suggest